Ginki Complex
The Ginki Complex was a pan-cultural movement which became a wider culture in Region A during the Early Bronze Age. Encompasses *Xipata *Wasach *Ipam *Kiicham *Akwuma *Ginkim Material Culture The Ginki Complex is generally defined by its relationship to the material culture of Ginkim, the oldest inhabited city on the planet at this time. Originally Ginkim itself had close ties to what is now the Bilimarrd culture, forming a single material culture (Marine Hornware), but this was many centuries ago and the two are now very clearly distinct. All Ginki cities are based around an enormous market, though the exact size various from city to city. Each of these markets (and by extension cities) competes against the other, striving to bring the widest selection of goods to their stalls. Each city then has additional districts outside the main market. Ginki Complex pottery is highly sophisticated, deliberately aping a number of natural forms; descendants of the ancient hornware are still in use, as well as forms designed to resemble various kinds of fish and shellfish. This is subject to slight variants in each city, but the general repertoire is all based on the ceramics of Ginkim. Housing is an area in which the various cultures of the Complex remain notable different; some cities, such as Ginki itself, operate in large mud-brick compounds of extended families, whereas Ipam features neatly arranged rectangular housing arrayed alongside the organised roads leading to the city centre, and Wasach instead sees tiers of stone built terraced housing. Shipbuilding is extremely developed and diverse; small canoes rub shoulders with seaworthy kayaks, river barges with deep hulled coastal merchantmen. Bronze is utilised for tools and weaponry, with the import of tin from upriver a priority for merchants of all cities. Serpentine is imported via Wasach for monumental architecture, corals and pearls from the mangroves further north for jewellery, silver and gold from the south as a medium of exchange. Nephrite from the Nraran culture is considered an extremely rare item, and owning items of nephrite jade indicates great wealth. A writing system, originally from Ipam, has begun to be used across the Six Nations which is known locally as tibquiote, 'Accounting' in rough translation, which is a hieroglyphic system written boustrophedon (i.e spirally outwards from the centre of the document). Society Generally it can be said that all Ginki cities value merchants and the acquisition of dazzling variety. However, the actual position of merchants in these societies can vary enormously; some cities are ruled by essentially oligarchic councils, but many are ruled by kings. An important part of royal ideology, as well as military success, is evidence of your ability to 'command the world' by bringing all of its products within your control. The various Ginki Complex cities are becoming more closely aligned politically and culturally over time, with a notion of the 'Six Nations' emerging; the idea that ultimately the dominant six local identities within the Ginki Complex are expressions of the same root identity. This being an ongoing process, the Six Nations are still politically and culturally distinct from one another; Ginkim, for example, is at the heart of a great trading network along the coast; Wasach is the custodian of the shuutkwish, the Snake Mountains; Ipam is the great nexus of the tin trade from both the Puinetukt and Te'kob, for the city commands the overland passes around the rapids in that part of the river. Ginki religion is not at all a unified set of practices and rituals, and negotiating the very different understandings each city has of spirituality is quite an undertaking for any enterprising merchant. However, a relatively settled pantheon is coming into existence as a combination of all the Six Nations' acknowledged deities. For example the ancient deity Ngulu, long worshipped at Ginkim, is now considered a goddess of the floods in all Six Nations. Pearls are traditionally associated with immortality across the Six Nations, and so this is a relatively unified element of religious depiction. But there are other fundamental disagreements; Xipata and its associates tend to use statues to depict animal headed variants of deities, whereas Wasach creates instead more abstract monuments of serpentine, and Akwuma considers it improper to create actual representations of deities at all. The social arrangements of each city are quite different, with some functioning more as oligarchies and others as city-kingdoms. Slavery is present in all cities, though slaves are not common in this era and are relatively valuable. Diet Maize, the ivory potato, sorghum, and kutjera all make up the building blocks of Six Nations cuisine. Each city also tends to cultivate groves of various fruits; shiny-leaved kondoo is common to almost all of them, as is coffee and figs (though coffee is generally for the upper segment of society). Beef is the most common meat, with the hump (these cattle being domesticated variants of zebu) generally being considered one of the finest cuts. Pork is more rare, and some of the Six Nations ban its consumption altogether. Guinea fowl is a common supplement to the diet. Honey is prized in cuisine, but is even more prized for the brewing of mead which is possibly the most highly valued consumable in the Six Nations. The hornware of deep antiquity was originally designed to drink mead from, and the hornware of this era has the same use. No festival or feast is ever complete without the presence of mead. In addition to these general truisms, some cities have more particular additions to the diet; Wasach and Kiicham cultivate the Moriche palm, though in Wasach it has to be grown around both natural and artificial lakes; Xipata and Ipam cultivate the Palmyra palm, both for fruit and its many other uses; Ginkim thrives off fishing in the rich waters of the surrounding seas and coast (which are often salted and exported to the other Six Nations), as well as importing exotics from other areas like cumin, carrot, and lettuce from the south, and mangrove fruits from the north. Notes Languages spoken here are generally *Uto-Aztecan, but there are substrata of various *Pama-Nyungan languages within the local dialects, especially at Ginkim.